May. 1911 
IMY AVIAN VISITORS: NOTES FROIM SOUTH DAKOTA 
97 
feed are not flying well, I have noticed both these flycatchers winging their way 
round and round over meadows and garden patches in their efforts to stir up the 
wherewith for a meal. While thus engaged they remind me of the swallows that 
often skim about among them, though these, of course, are much more graceful in 
their gliding flight than are the flycatchers. 
I stated that the two flycatchers are friendly to each other, but nevertheless 
there is sometimes a spirited rivalry between them. Once at Grass Creek, South 
Dakota, I saw a commoit Kingbird and an Arkansas Flycatcher contending for the 
possession of a large moth that was doing its utmost to escape them by a zigzag 
flight. Both birds would dash at the insect and then at each other. The Kingbird 
at length was successful in .securing the quarry, and thereupon alighted upon a 
wire fence with his prey, while the other bird flew away. The victor was proceed- 
ing to pluck the wings off the unfortunate moth, when it got away, and fluttered 
down into some long grass. The bird hovered over the place where it had disap- 
peared, uttering a piercing “peet, peet”; but becoming alarmed at an ill-timed 
movement on my part he gave up the search and flew to a clump of trees hard by. 
When all was quiet, in the proper season, generally speaking, from mid-April 
to late in September or after, stragglers often being encountered much beyond the 
average autumn limit, sometimes the Mourning Doves came timidly into the yard. 
Their preference, however, is for the dusty trails and the old fields abandoned to 
waste and weeds by the Indians. At Grass Creek I found them nesting in large 
numbers throughout the month of June, 190,5. None of the nests that I found 
were situated upon the ground. 
The Horned Darks (probably at certain times including two or more subspecies 
or races) during snowstorms when the problem of existence for them must be 
complex, congregate where the ground has been swept bare Iw the wind in its 
eddying round buildings. At this time of the year the Sioux Indians sometimes 
shoot them with pointless arrows and use them for food, while in far off Utah the 
Utes catch them by means of horse-hair snares. Preceding storms or other marked 
meteorological changes, they are wont to gather together in much larger flocks than 
ordinarily, and upon such occasions their restless and excited manner of twittering 
and scurrying is certain to attract attention. In May and June the young birds, 
unable to fly well or at all, are frequently crushed by the feet of horses and cattle, 
or the wheels of vehicles. Once, in winter, I witnessed the attempts of a pair of 
hungry coyotes to capture Horned Darks by stalking them. But they were un- 
successful, as the birds were on their guard, as they must needs always be, and 
made short flights wdienever the canines drew uncomfortably near. 
The Yellow-billed Cuckoo ( Coccyziis ainericanus) often arrives in those parts 
as early as May 22. Ever since I first came to know this bird in Illinois, many 
years ago, as the “rain-crow,’’ he has greatly interested and delighted me. In 
1905, it was on May 23 that I saw the first Cuckoo of the season at Grass Creek, 
South Dakota. He was flitting silently about among the trees that stood at the 
foot of a low bluff when first I spied him. Deaving him sitting on a willow branch, 
I hurried to the house, twenty rods distant or so, to procure my field-glasses. 
When I came back, there he sat on the selfsame branch and paid but little heed to 
my movements. I viewed him for some time, and as I approached a little too near, 
according to his view-point, he merely hopped to another perch a few feet away. 
There is something of Old World mystery, somewhat monkish and medieval, 
about this bird, with his sidling, shy behavior, his exclusive ways. I walked down 
the creek, forty rods or so, and returned in about a quarter of an hour. Still he 
sat there, lost in reverie, his back to the sun and wind. And thus I left him. 
